Wednesday, December 18, 2013

White Dwarf Wednesday #91

Daleks in Sombreros. oops sorry. Getting ahead of myself. I'll get back to this.

Headed into the deep summer of 1987 with White Dwarf #91. I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever flipped through this issue. This was not one of the ones I had in my collection I bought a few years back and had to later get. Not really sure if this was money well spent or not. I guess it completes my collection.

White Dwarf 91 does look different than its predecessors. Not just the "10" on the cover, but on the interior as well. I recall that Dragon was due to make some similar changes here around 1988-89 just prior to AD&D 2 being released. Here it is the herald of the "Warhammer Magazine".

This month's cover is Blood Royle by Chris Achilleos again. The date on it is 1986, but it doesn't seem quite up to his normal quality.

Mike Brunton is still our editor and he gives us another insight on how the magazine is made. Didn't we just do that?

Open Box covers Mayfair's DC Heroes' take on Watchmen. Sad as this is to admit, but I learned of Watchmen from this book. Hey, we had no comic book stores where I grew up, but I did have access to RPGs. It was an interesting take on the Moore's classic to say the least. Ah. Now I get the cover. It is the cover of the Blood Royal board game from GW. If you are one of those Grognards that believe all the ills that happened to AD&D can be blamed on Dragonlance then the review of the "Tales from the Last Inn" is for you. It confirms all your preconceived notions and fears; well at least for this book anyway. My recollection of this book is there is almost no game material in it and it instead focuses on DragonlanceTM.
Book of Lairs II gets a mostly positive review. Interestingly there is a picture for the Egg of the Phoenix (one of the last pre-packaged modules I ever went through) but I can't find the review. I am sure I am not missing any pages.

Critical Mass is next with the list of what was hot in the summer of 1987. This is the sign of my turning away from Sci-fi and Fantasy; that is I have not read a single book mentioned. Each installment of Critical Mass had at least one book I had read, this one doesn't. I was sticking with Piers Anothony's Incarnations of Immortality out of some blind sense of duty or loyalty, but otherwise I was done with SciFi/Fantasy at this point. No my muse had become Lovecraft and Poe and soon Clark Ashton Smith.

As if on cue, "Ghosties & Ghoulies & ... Squid?" talks about the mythos behind the Cthulhu Mythos and the Call of Cthulhu game. In truth this article is much more needed now than it was then. A lot of so called "mythos" games are a thin pastiche of what Lovecraft wrote about. You can put tentacles on some horror and say it is Lovecraftian. It also takes the shine off of Lovecraft. I enjoyed his stories, but lets be honest here, he wasn't great. He has had lasting effect mostly I think because his stuff was so novel and struck a chord in people. It did with me. I think this article, or ones like it, need to be required reading for anyone attempting to play any game inspired by the Mythos or has Lovecraft's themes in it.

Moving on we get fumbles in Warhammer Fantasy. Reading it over it could be adapted to any game really.

David Langford gives us "Quotes for a Newer Testament" which is part story, part fluff and part post-apoc RPG background.

A Matter of Pride is a short D&D adventure for 6-8 characters 3rd to 5th level. It is actually a longer one and involves some NPCs, a goblin lair and an evil (chaotic actually) elf. And yes it is for D&D and not AD&D. While it reads like most other D&D adventures of the time it does seem to have a few new twists here and there. Might give this one a try. Since I am going to xerox the Lovecraft pages, might as well do these too.

Little Lost Warbot is a Paranoia adventure featuring the aforementioned Daleks in Sombreros. Let those words sink in a little. Or better yet look.

It is a really long adventure about finding a lost warbot, but honestly it looks like an excuse to blow up PCs and make silly Dalek jokes. Maybe I am old and bitter but I just don't get Paranoia anymore.

Nobelese covers Nobility and Royalty in Warhammer Fantasy. Mostly rules free, but certainly very much in the Warhammer world. It could be paired with some of the Nobility articles from the last few issues.

A Hard Act To Follow is a nice little guide to Law and Order in CoC games based in Great Britain.

Of interest is an ad for the Manual of the Planes. The art is a little different than what we got later on.
Of course we would have to wait till Planescape to get stats for that Astral Dreadnought.

'Eavy Metal gets 4 full color, bright pages. I can say this for sure the quality of printing is getting better since #89.

Moving on to a few ads I could not help but notice some art plagiarism in a Creations Unlimited ad.

These are things I notice. Sure they are not exactly the same to the point of tracing, but very close.
Goes to show how long this sort of thing has been going on (and yes even Gygax did it on the cover of the original D&D boxed set).

Blood in the Snow is a Warhammer Fantasy adventure for 2-4 players. 8 pages, so a decent size to be honest.

End with Letters, ads, classifieds and full page ads.

Quality is up as is page count, but I am finding less that hold my interest here. Crimony I am focusing stupid Daleks and art theft from 30 years ago.